kari-no-sugata

I remember seeing an interview with Brandon when it was publicly announced that he would finish the WoT series. He seemed like a nice, humble but serious guy and mentioned he had a free book to download on his website. So I downloaded Warbreaker and read it. Then bought the hardcover (I love the cover). I liked reading the annotations to Warbreaker and actually read a bunch of Mistborn ones without even reading the book. I thought the series sounded interesting so I bought the trilogy and read it in 4 days or something. I then read all his new epic fantasy novels as they came out... though only read Elantris last year.

I wouldn't be surprised if the progress in Radianthood we actually see Shallan go through is a bit different to normal Lightweavers, since she already had a bond with Pattern. Certainly she never had to re-swear the First Ideal. It would be interesting to know whether or not the truths that Shallan speaks in tWoK actually counted towards her overall Radianthood level with Pattern or just helped resurrect her bond with Pattern (I'm presuming that the Cryptics Shallan talks to in tWoK are not Pattern). Could be either of both. Regarding Shallan's original bonding with Pattern, I had initially wondered if she came to it via a positive route (playing with light, childhood innocence) but since Pattern says it's the lies (that prevented her from breaking) that initially attracted him I came to suspect there is some further trauma in her childhood instead. My pet theory is that she had a twin sister who died but there's lots of possibilities.

Where did you get this from? If you're referring to my post on the events/signing forum then I clearly stated that the order was not settled, though Taln was "probably" book 10.

I remember it being in general, ie any of the remaining 8. They do read like a sort of "work in progress summary analysis" from a highly Cosmere aware researcher Pretty sure both order of flashbacks and who will get flashbacks for the last 5 are not settled. I'd guess this won't get nailed down until he writes book 6. Surprised you're down on Herald flashbacks. I'd love to see their origins, what life was like on Roshar before the Desolations started, details on Desolations and Voidbringers, how they became Heralds, the Oathpact, what sort of things they did in and out of battle, what the first spren based Surgebinders were like and also the Recreance and other major events. They've pretty much experienced the entire history of Roshar.

Okay I remembered some other stuff from the pub (again, NOT verbatim at all) Described Khriss as research scientist. Sounded to me like she was not personally powerful, just really knowledgeable. The Cosmere's resident uber-geek? Hoid doesn't really have friends, more like people who find him less annoying (or he finds less annoying?). Talked about someone he might be more of a friend with - sounded like "Frost". They're not written but we should eventually get annotations for Stormlight Achieve. (normally does them during copy-edit but wasn't done that way for current books) For the first 5 SA books he's heavily outlined them. For the last 5 SA books he has outlines for the main climax scenes. For the flashback characters for the last 5 books he's not settled on which ones or order but current plan is for Taln, Ash (aka Shalash), Lift, Jasnah and Renarin. I suggested Taln for book 10 and he said "probably". I also suggested Lift for book 6 but seems that one is really up for grabs currently. He also specifically stated that for one of the flashback characters that they would be already dead (sounded like definitely dead not maybe dead).

The quote from the Diagram itself has a strong sense of shock and surprise... awe even. It seems like super-Taravangian's mind got blown. So yeah I agree - I've always thought that Hoid totally fits that. Mraize seems like very very long shot with what we currently know - Mraize being a student (to Iyatil) and being at least one step below Thaidakar hardly gives a sense of awe. We have a bunch of world-hoppers on Roshar though, so would be interesting to know why Androtagia singled out Mraize as a candidate? (they don't know of any others maybe?) PS I would not be at all surprised if Mraize is wearing some kind of disguise. Iyatil clearly is and Mraize is her student after all... and Shallan ponders the wide gap between his looks and attitude on both meetings. Definitely "suspicious".

Let's see if I can remember the stuff that came out in the pub chat... (this is my rough recollection, not word for word). Start with the big one - Brandon threw us a bone on what the big world-hopping hint in Elantis could be (since nobody's gotten it yet): Raoden has misinterpreted one of the Aons. Intended to be a small (ie indirect hint). Make of that what you will. On being asked if an Elantrian could wield Nightblood, he said yes it's possible but would be very dangerous - you'd have to figure out a way to connect Nightblood with a local source of Investiture. On Shallan's origins as a character: mostly derived from a character in Dragonsteel (I'm guessing the woman who turns up at the end of the "Liar of Partinel" book fragment that's been posted on his website) and Mat Cauthon. Specifically mentioned that she has issues with authority figures. On origins of Dalinar: from story he wrote as teenager - his brother is the king who gets assassinated and he has to decide whether to take over from his nephew or not. Hoid is the court magician There was lots of other questions but many were repeats. Hmm, wonder if I forgot something significant... hope not

I definitely enjoyed the Jasnah one more, but that's more to do with the revelations and tension in the scene. Was thrilling being there as it was read out. For what it's worth, I thought Kaladin had very good reasons to be depressed: he very reasonably fears being "too late" and he's run out of Stormlight and he's really worn out. Staying positive in such a situation would very challenging. So I have no complaints about him "being depressed" - if I would have any complaints it would be with how he handles it.

Currently on lunch break, let's see if I can quickly justify my comments on gender-bending The Lord Ruler... To put it a different way: I think there would be a number of knock-on effects that would (slightly) harm immersion, believability and reader expectations. You either have to accept that or start making more and more changes to the plot and characters. Consider the back story: if tLR is female then the person who was thought to be the Hero of Ages would also have to be female - else that reveal would be blatantly obvious in advance. This also means we get two female "hero of ages", before the real one turns up, rather than mixed gender which harms the gender neutral aspect of the "hero of ages" that is an important part of the series climax. Consider the society: if tLR is female then this would automatically have make it harder to have a society with "male privilege" (ie male dominated) - tLR has been ruler for 1000 years, so the effects of this would be deeply ingrained into society. This would normally be considered a good thing but if we make the society "better" then Kelsier becomes less justified in staging his bloody revolution. Hope that makes sense.

I think it was somewhere around 9.30. Yes, he really did sign books for 3 hours! And was still just as friendly and energetic for the rest of the evening. Amazing. They started playing Magic around 10.30-11pm and left to continue at Brandon's hotel at around midnight, when the pub closed.

He did mention in the pub that this scene might not necessarily be included in the final book... and also that if it isn't included then he might post it on his website.

Hi all, I just got back. Hope you all got back okay. About an hour after you left me all alone Brandon came and sat at "our" table Unfortunately, I didn't get to ask much but I feel very satisfied. Back to work tomorrow so got to get to bed. PS I finally customised my profile

Hmm, nice thread. I've been thinking about Brandon's villains in his main original works. If we flip the "big bad" to female, would it work? Elantris? Nope, don't think so. Well, we could make some special tweaks to the setting, particularly since we barely see the "big bad" at all. Mistborn? Nope for the Lord Ruler. Maybe for the Big Bad of the overall series though I don't think some of the character interactions would work so well... though it's interesting to note that when Brandon first came up with the concept, Vin was originally a boy Stormlight Archive? Yes and no. I think Odium could be done as female but it wouldn't "add" anything to the plot that I can see (and introduce some potential pitfalls) Warbreaker? YES! I totally think that the hidden-evil-mastermind (whose name I won't spoil) would work just fine as female. I think it would work better even. Regarding publishers (or editors or agents)... I don't think they're the problem at all. After all, if you had an author come to you with a book with a good female villain would you ask them to change the villain to male? Hell no. The problem is definitely to do with expectations and believability (ie society). For example, consider Vorin society in the Stormlight Achieve - would the story work if we flipped the gender roles around? I think it would be incredibly hard for it to not feel farcical or like a parody. At least in a fantasy setting, female magic users face fewer hurdles - it's much easier to have a believable female mage fight on par with male mages than a believable female warrior fight on pair with male warriors. On the other hand, while I love Vin she is quite a tomboy (understandably, given her background) and I'm really happy that Brandon has gone the opposite way with Shallan - having a female protagonist who is feminine but still dangerously effective. Edit - just noticed this sub-forum is supposed to specifically stay clear of being about Brandon's works so I'll add some more generic commentary... Part of the problem is the uphill struggle against "men are from Mars women are from Venus" - the antagonist tends to be destructive, which is seen as a more "masculine" role. How do you get around that? One option is make your female Evil Overlord be non-human though you then have to be careful not to make her a cartoon villain. In the Dragonlance series the main "evil god" is female but that's more a YA series by modern standards rather than epic fantasy. But hmm, let's ignore this line of reasoning actually... and try to think of possible interesting female villains in epic fantasy. How about a smart, well educated woman who reasons her way to the conclusion that the world is inherently broken and decides to fix it... but one of the problems she needs to solve to achieve that is to forcibly take over the world first...

Yes but with difficulty! At least for him in the early stages, the Radiants he'll be dealing with are people he already has a decent relationship with. btw, one thing I think we should consider in all this is the spren involved. Jasnah has already dropped hints about "spren politics". Syl describes Cryptics as a "revolting type" of spren and "but not evil, I don't think" - which implies a big gulf between those two spren types. I very much doubt this is an isolated case. The Nahel bond works both ways, so spren opinion and spren politics are going to have an influence on human opinion and politics. I doubt that the Stormfather is completely above politics but his opinion is going to count for an awful lot - though considering that Syl thinks of the Stormfather as being "broken" maybe one of Dalinar's side tasks is to help "fix" the Stormfather a bit Actually, I'm worried about the opposite problem - that he might be overcompensating and being too benevolent in some cases (eg with Amaram and Sadeas). I think the way he dealt with the Parshendi (storm-form ones and not) was fine though. I do think that his talk with Wit about how his achievements during his youth were flawed and helped create the current situation indicate that he has fully realised that "The Blackthorn" model of leadership is part of the problem not part of the solution.

So it's more of a genealogy? Kinda funny since just before I was reading this I was wondering if there was any relationship between Radiant Orders/Ideals/Virtues/etc and the Greek gods and I was looking at some of the family charts of the Greek gods. (No relationship found) I agree with Maxal though that the "odd" bonds are the ones between Edgedancers/Windrunners and Lightweavers/Stonewards - the other non-adjacent links (eg the Windrunner/Lightweaver one) are what appear to be the natural opposites of each Order. It would be rather surprising if all the Heralds were related to each other. But actually... it's a good idea: we shouldn't necessarily see this as a "Radiant chart" - it could also be a "Herald chart"... Edit Another possibility: maybe these extra lines indicate something related to the spren for each Radiant order?

I dunno. I suggested in an earlier post that maybe a "rogue" Bondsmith caused the Recreance. It's just as possible that a lack of Bondsmiths (indirectly) lead to it. Not that I have any basis for this but if only a Bondsmith can unify them then probably only a Bondsmith can keep them unified...?

Just to be clear, I was only considering his general leadership skills or for something along the lines of what he is doing currently. I don't know how much he'll change but yeah... at the moment he's poorly suited for a king-like role (which leader of the Radiants would be like in terms of responsibility). For the whole series, maybe Dalinar would have to survive for most of it unless there happens to be a good replacement candidate for Bondsmith around, which doesn't seem likely currently. So maybe it'll never become an issue. On the other hand, maybe part of the problem for them in the second 5 books is solving whatever problem they have specifically without a Bondsmith. (Just talking about Dalinar's chances of survival here) I don't think he really realises just how much he has to learn...

There's a point where Dalinar considers Kaladin's leadership abilities and how people like him often have a bumpy start - and that he had similar issues when younger. Maybe in 10 years I think they would find it far easier to trust Szeth if he was literally being compelled, rather than being compelled by his religion - kinda hard for people to take religions other than their own seriously. So even if they find out "why" he took those various actions the cultural divide would be a rather big hurdle. I think it would also depend on how much the Radiants come to trust their spren and their judgement - would they feel they should trust Szeth because a spren has chosen to trusts him? Maybe. Could be fun to see Szeth walking around the world, taking action where he feels justice is needed...

I wonder if the lines connecting the Orders means the same thing in all cases? In which case it would seem to imply some kind of "compatibility" - naturally adjacent orders are "compatible".... but what about the distant orders? If we consider the adjacent connections to be lines "one" and "two" then the "third" would be to what seems like the opposite order. So what does this "compatibility" actually mean in practice? Some special way the different Orders can combine their abilities to produce effects that are not possible otherwise? If so I think it would have to be something pretty concrete (ie specific and reliable). It's also possible it could be something related to fabrials or gems. Ponder...

Regarding Bondsmiths... My feeling is that they hold some kind of unique special power that gives them influence over all Radiants - I doubt it's unrelated that Ishar is the Herald with the same Surges as Bondsmiths and he effectively founded the Radiants. So I can totally see Bondsmiths having some kind of natural leadership/authority position. I even had an idea that a Bondsmith going bad could have caused the Recreance... or could have enforced the "solution". To some degree, what happened in the past doesn't matter too much for the current story since they only have limited knowledge of what went on before - they're kinda like "wilders" to use a term from The Wheel of Time. To use more modern terminology they're like a "reboot" of the Radiants not simply a reformation - they can do things differently if they want. But Dalinar wants to be the head Radiant and I doubt any of the others want to so he'll get the position by default

I'm okay with "Taln" not being Taln so long as it's one of the other Heralds. My current pet theory is that the real Taln appeared some time ago (maybe 5-7 years ago) and was found by one of the other Heralds, who was then plagued with guilt over what had happened to Taln and took him to the Nightwatcher to get "cured" - but the curse was that the Herald who brought him became insane instead (or got swapped with Taln or whatever). Doesn't explain what happened to the Blades though... or what has happened to the real Taln. I wonder how long it'll be until Shallan finds some old records in Urithru that mention Taln's original name not his modern one...

I would say that it is possible... but really really hard. I don't think being with Nalan is going to help, long term - if Szeth realises that Nalan is also wrong and must be opposed then I can see him getting redemption. (though I expect others will disagree with me here) I think that Nightblood will help.

We actually get a clear example in WoR of it being possible:

Regarding the Divine Attributes... That I'm aware of, we have no WoB to clarify how they should be applied to Radiants. Anyone got anything? Basically, I think a certain degree of caution should be applied: the Ars Arcanum are in-world documents for a start and it's not like the "Tens" stuff is listed as a "spotters guide to Radiants" either. I'm not saying it's useless or unrelated though! I strongly suspect that originally these "Divine Attributes" were for the Heralds, not the Radiants - but because the Radiants are based on the Heralds there is a certain degree of correlation. For the Radiants, I think it is more important to look at what the spren are saying - actual events trump the Ars Arcanum. To take a clear example, Pattern never discourages Shallan from "lying" in general but is very specifically against her lying to herself. This does correlate well with what the in-world Words of Radiance book says about the Lightweavers. So yes, "honesty" is critically important to the Lightweavers but it's specifically about being honest with yourself (or seeing things as they really are) rather than honesty in general.

I should be there - PM sent. I was on holiday anyway and just extended it one day